@heather I'm not basing my support on those messages, but on prior events and messages, some of which have already been brought up. Let me put it like this: The star board is about as good an indicator of quality as the HNQ list, and I think a lot of us agree that the latter is Not a Good Thing. Buuuut, I think that there have been a lot more unproductive chat discussions about politics than productive ones.

@DanielSank That's a good point: We've all seen different things and have interpreted different events in different ways, and have different conclusions. So that probably accounts for some agreements and disagreements.

what I meant to put up above is that "be nice" is a sort of universal rule - most everyone agrees we should live by it. "no politics" is not a universal rule. Therefore, on a site like SE, user input should be there.

@HDE226868 Yep. For example, I understand better now that the mods are aware of very widespread problems when chatrooms get onto politics. I will try to keep this in mind when I offer any further opinions.

The problem is this. The probability that politics is going to lead to unpleasantness is *very* high, given previous incidents across the network. If we do as you say and "lay in wait" until people get to the point where they are violating the Be Nice policy, the damage has already been done: Insults have been slung, feelings hurt and the chat conversation disrupted. What *benefit* is there to allow that to happen in the middle of the main chat room if we can contain it in dedicated rooms? And if it doesn't happen, no harm has been done either, and the conversation continues happily in that…

@ACuriousMind I disagree with the politics decision, but I am under the impression right now that we were talking about your decision to just ban it without user input. Also, what Daniel said about politics is way too broad to ban.

> Note that this ban on political discussion is of course subject to common sense, and subordinate to its goal of prohibiting inflammatory discussion. You will not be banned for mentioning the newest EU regulation on cucumber curvature, or curiously asking what political structure another country has, etc. It should be pretty evident in most cases whether a given topic has the potential to be inflammatory or not - if in doubt, make another room for it or just ask.

@DanielSank uh... no? At least, I'm definitely not using "political" to mean "political stuff that's likely to cause trouble" in this instance. I'm just using it to mean "political", the plain old definition of the word as I know it.

@heather Each of the conversations I removed had already started to deteriorate. One had Emilio explicitly asking to stop it (which everyone else was ignoring), the other started with satire and immediate drew a "The left is politically insane" after it. That's not "non-inflammatory".

I have to head out. @heather, if you get the chance, I'd love to see a meta answer from you on that question, explaining what you've said so far so others not here can think about it. I still stand by that the problematic discussions take away much more than the productive ones give, but again, that's based on negative experiences I've had in a variety of chat rooms, meaning that I think it's likely the same thing will happen in The h Bar in the future.

> Note that this ban on political discussion is of course subject to common sense, and subordinate to its goal of prohibiting inflammatory discussion. You will not be banned for mentioning the newest EU regulation on cucumber curvature, or curiously asking what political structure another country has, etc. It should be pretty evident in most cases whether a given topic has the potential to be inflammatory or not - if in doubt, make another room for it or just ask.

Politics (from Greek: Politiká: Politika, definition "affairs of the cities") is the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance — organized control over a human community, particularly a state. Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community (a usually hierarchically organized population) as well as the interrelationship(s) between communities.
A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting or forcing one...

@heather why dont you guys experiment with building up other rooms and getting your favorite ppl to join? why is that concept so rare on SE chat anyway? think theres huge possibility/ underutilized for experimenting

@heather While it's evident we need to clarify what exactly the "ban on politics" entails, you should be prepared that there will always remain some sort of grey area. Working on minimizing it is good, though.

@ACuriousMind why need there be a gray area? i think you should fight to have no gray area about what is on and off-topic. if there is gray, you are either being too unclear or too broad in your ban, both of which are currently true.

@heather Have you ever done that exercise where you get a group of people to try and define e.g. a chair? It's amazingly hard and I haven't seen anyone who has come up with one that not either excludes at least one thing we would call "chair" or includes things that are clearly not "chairs" in common usage. (sorry for edits :|)

Don't ban "politics". Start small, i.e. "Recent discussions about the US immigration policy have been problematic, so we're temporarily banning it in hbar (but other rooms are unaffected) until we can craft a more precise policy".

@ACuriousMind my point is not that there should be no gray area, but you admitting the idea of gray area is like already admitting defeat. you should not ban "chairs" or "politics"! you should ban "discussion of donald trump's recent involvement in politics in a way that violates the be nice policy."

What you guys did, banning "politics" made a few users feel like you were flailing for a way to solve a temporary problem with minimal effort on your side. This makes people feel like you care more for your convenience than for the health of the site.

@ACuriousMind I am planning on making a detailed meta post myself, I simply wish to have this conversation first. But I agree with Daniel Sank. I think I upvoted it myself because I was glad the mods were finally starting a reasonable discussion about their decision.

I would also like to make a point here: I would ask that the mods temporarily make a log of all at all political related discussions that have been deleted available for discussion about what's okay and not okay in political discussions.

not as an open chat room, but just a list available at the meta post. user names can be blocked out or whatever.

@DanielSank Well, I'm fairly sure we did not do this because we thought it was the quickest solution. We don't rush out a quick solution with the intention of making it permanent when we think there is a better solution available.

to reference my earlier comment "and with not really any evidence for your side except your word, and NO user input whatsoever in a user input based site, and then an overly strict enforcement of your ban." (italics added)

@DanielSank From the help center: "Unlike normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta invites the community to discuss, debate and propose changes to the way the community itself behaves, as well as how the software itself works. On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself." Strangely enough, I don't recall the restriction to the tag...

It's asking for user imput. It's not asking for user-sourced policy because of what we started this discussion with: Both the Be Nice policy and the confinement of politics to separate chat rooms are general SE philosophy; that's not something we physics mods just made up on the spot.

@heather I quoted the exact passage where it says that in the meta post.

> But if you want to do that [discussing politics], if you've found others who also want to have that conversation, then make a room for the topic, welcome anyone interested who is willing to be civil, and then actually take it seriously.

You know, I have to say this: I think I'm a pretty reasonable person with a half-decent ability to understand other people's points of view. Right now, given the discussion we've had, my inclination is to completely ignore the "no politics" policy and just move on with my life because I can't tell what you guys actually want to ban and I don't think you really care about being more clear.

If you did, I'd expect more positive reaction to this whole discussion, but instead you're mostly defending what you already did.

If y'all wanna talk about politics, good on ya - this is important stuff, and deserves to be discussed. We have an entire site dedicated to the topic, and even sites that aren't dedicated to politics can still have civil political discussions.

@DanielSank I think your point about us needing to make what "politics" means in this case is valid, and I have already said so. But I also think that our general course of action here was correct and so far I haven't seen anything that convinces me otherwise.

@heather We're drifting into textual exegesis instead of arguments here, but the part about the separate rooms is bolded in the original post, strongly suggesting it is not an optional idea one may simply decide to ignore.

@heather honestly, I don't understand how you come to that conclusion from Shog9's meta post. Maybe this is another case of differing interpretations of language. We should clear that up. I just can't wrap my head around yours.

FWIW, my reasoning in that post is entirely practical: if you're in *the main room for a site*, it's extremely unlikely that you're gonna end up with a stable group of people who, 1) want to talk about politics at all 2) can do it constructively

If you can pull it off, good on ya. But... Have a backup plan for when it doesn't work out

For example, maybe you can all discuss air quality legislation in a polite and informative fashion, but someone inevitably flips out when the topic turns to religious freedom as it pertains to minor surgery.

Ok, fine - once you see that, don't keep pushing; either drop the topic, or move it somewhere else.

Just don't make the mistake of deciding that "we're all good, kind people here, so those problems in other rooms won't ever happen"

@heather @DanielSank encourage you to write up your objections (which think have merit) as answers to ACMs meta post & will likely upvote myself, thats the SE mechanism/ convention/ system etc for resolving these types of conflicts "as best possible"...

@Shog9 so perhaps a policy along the lines of "we recommend staying away from politics because it's risky, and if you insist on discussing it, be extra careful to be nice" is what we should be working towards?

This is sort of a follow-up to two past discussions:
Toward a philosophy of Chat
Does the Be Nice policy require SE users to "be nice" to people who are not SE users (e.g. public figures)?
Over the past year, there's been an uptick in discussions of politics in chat. JUST LOOK AT THIS CHART!
...